The days of “Junk DNA,” are gone.

I still remember the first biology class back in school when I was told there where Gene’s which had “Junk DNA.” When I realised the scale of the information that was present and realised that in some species 1% of the code where genes then I began to question just how far away we must have been in terms of our understanding at the classroom level of the truth behind the topic.

Today we seemed to have ditched the term Junk and use coding and non coding DNA. There is a clear understanding in this that in some way the non coding information details how expression is determined. As the research is largely limited in this field, there is still a gap in our understanding.

While in my classroom I could have perhaps been the only one (I don’t know I never asked) pondering the question that surely the junk has a purpose. Today I am aware I would be far from the only one that would form this mind set, im aware even the everyday public will grasp there is more to the complexity of the topic than can be explained in a sentence. Information tends to have a purpose, and although data does not directly become wisdom, with time it no doubt can.

Moving past the information question all depends at what level of detail we like to operate. A theoretical thinker considers perhaps what comes next after DNA, what are the implications of personalised medicine. How will proteomics, metabolics etc come together to form an answer that has real clinical outcomes?

So the practical thinker will look at the problem one detail at a time identifying the Gene its expression its impact, and when these two forces meet so we come together to form a new level of understanding.

The space is an emergent point of inflection for healthcare today and will no doubt be a major point of change in how even the every day public view themselves in the years to come.